The Brief

The dual strike by unions representing actors and writers has brought Hollywood to a standstill. It’s the biggest strike in more than six decades as the Writers Guild and actors union SAG-AFTRA together represent more than 170,000 workers who are now on the picket lines instead of at work.

Even as union members advocate for better wages, residuals and regulations on the use of artificial intelligence, they know another key benefit is at risk in the short-term: health insurance.

Affordable, generous and increasingly hard to qualify for

The union health insurance is predicated on the notion that members work consistently and lucratively enough to make a minimum amount of money, which makes it difficult to first attain and then sustain.

Often referred to in hushed, reverent tones as the “Cadillac of health insurance” by those who have it, the policy offered by the Writers Guild feels like a holdover from a bygone age.

• No monthly premiums.
• $600 per year to cover the rest of your immediate family.
• Deductibles that are in the hundreds — not thousands — of dollars.

The bar for entry is high. Writers must earn a little over $41,700 in covered union work a year to qualify for coverage and residuals don’t count. The income requirement continues to rise, which coupled with the increasingly uncertain reliability of employment means even experienced writers can have a hard time qualifying.

Writers can accumulate credits by qualifying for WGA health insurance for 10 years and by earning more than $100,000 in covered work. Top earners can rack up three points per year, which can then be cashed in when writers experience a dry spell and can’t make the minimum income requirement, but coverage ends the quarter after the credits are used up.

For example, a writer who qualifies for health insurance for 10 years but earns less than $100,000 can cash in all their points and continue their insurance for up to a year and a half if they are only insuring themselves.

But insuring dependents cost more credits, meaning people with families have less of a stop-gap to fall back on.

As the strike stretches on into another quarter, many union writers are furtively calculating how many credits they have and how long this temporary measure will buy them, if they have credits at all.

Health insurance benefits for actors

In contrast, residual payments do count toward the $26,000 per year that striking SAG-AFTRA members must earn to qualify for health insurance offered by the union — another reason increasing residual payments, especially from streamers like Netflix, are a high priority for members who are on the margins.

Plan premiums from SAG-AFTRA are $125 per month for union members. For a family of four or more, the monthly cost rises to $249 per month or $2,988 per year. That’s less than half of the $6,680 that the average California worker with employer-sponsored health insurance paid for family coverage in 2022, according to a report by the California Health Care Foundation.

Issues with access to these benefits

Members of both unions said it took them years to make enough money to qualify for the union health insurance, while other union members who have worked in the industry for years never have. Both SAG-AFTRA and WGA were approached for interviews about their health insurance offerings. SAG-AFTRA declined to be interviewed and WGA sent LAist a link to their FAQ page.

Could studios and streamers continue coverage?

They could, but it’s unlikely.

In July, IATSE president Matt Loeb called for studios and streamers to offer an extension of healthcare benefits to below the line workers who may lose them if they fall short of qualifying during the strikes. IATSE is not on strike.

“Make no mistake — if the studios truly cared about the economic fallout of their preemptive work slowdown against below-the-line crewmembers, they could continue to pay crewmembers and fully fund their healthcare at any moment, as they did in 2020 during the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic” Loeb wrote.

Half of the trustees of the Motion Picture Industry Pension & Health Plan are represented by companies involved in the strike. The WGA’s strike FAQ tells members “there is no Health Fund requirement that the Health Plan extend health insurance coverage during a strike, and Trustees are 50% management and 50% Guild.”

“The moments that I've been at risk of or have lost health insurance in the past pre-strike were not moments when I wasn't working,” said Susanna Fogel, a filmmaker who is a member of both the WGA and DGA unions. “I was working, but there were particulars to the work that just made it fall short or fall in the wrong month to stay covered. So it was just always a stress,” she said.

Should the unions simply drop the income requirement to a lower amount so more members could qualify? Alex Winter, a longtime member of three industry unions, doesn't think so.

“It seems draconian to turn back to the unions and say, well, since we have these oligarchs who are hoovering up all the profits let's try to take what few squirrel nuts we have and scatter them out amongst whoever survived staying in the industry as opposed to fighting to get equitable pay, which is what we're doing,” Winter said.

A new California law could help strikers on the margins

All California workers who lose their employer-sponsored health insurance may be eligible for the state’s Medicaid program, known as Medi-Cal, or qualify to buy health insurance through Covered California, where they may receive subsidies that bring down the monthly cost of insurance. But those premiums will likely be far higher than SAG-AFTRA or WGA plans, at a time when striking workers are making much less money.

But writers and actors who lose their union health insurance as a result of the strike could benefit from a new California law that took effect July 1, 2023 aimed at averting just that situation.

AB2530 received $2 million in funding under the new state budget. To qualify, a union worker must first lose coverage as a result of the strike. According to Covered California spokesperson Craig Tomiyoshi, eligible workers will have their premiums covered as if their incomes were just above the Medicaid eligibility level.

Here’s an example. A single striking worker in their mid-30s who lives in West Hollywood loses their union health insurance during the strike due to the work stoppage. This person goes to Covered California’s exchange to find health insurance. They make $50,000 and are offered a middle-tier “benchmark” plan that would cost them about $320 a month in premiums. Under the new law for striking workers, that person selecting the same plan would pay nothing in premiums – as if that person made $20,385 a year — for the duration of the strike.

Not all striking workers will enroll in a free plan. Striking workers will be able to pick plans that are more expensive than the benchmark plan. If they do, they will pay the difference in premiums.

“At this point, we are not aware that WGA or SAG-AFTRA members have lost health coverage, but if any Californian has lost coverage, we encourage them to contact Covered California as soon as possible,” Tomiyoshi wrote in an email response. He added that people anticipating losing their union health insurance should also get in touch.

Beginning Jan. 1, 2024, another law kicks in. Covered California will end deductibles on the middle-tier benchmark plans, meaning a striking worker could receive free premiums under one law and no deductibles beginning in the New Year, if the labor dispute lasts that long.

Californians are required to have health insurance for at least nine months of the year, or they risk paying a hefty penalty during tax season.

Crews left out

The new law doesn’t cover crew members who are not part of the striking unions but have lost health insurance due to the work stoppage.

A new mutual aid group was created to fill that gap.

The Union Solidarity Coalition known by the acronym TUSC has raised more than $200,000 to give assistance to IATSE and Teamsters members, said founding member Alex Winter.

“I don't know anyone, honestly, in a lot of the primary crew areas who [aren't] in danger of losing their health insurance, and I know a lot of people who have lost their health insurance,” Winter said.

The idea for the non-profit began with conversations between crews and filmmakers, said Fogel, who is a fellow founding TUSC member.

“Because their coverage is based on the hours that they get within a certain window of time, some of the [crew members] mentioned they or people they knew were at risk for not making their hours due to productions shutting down, or if they opted not to cross a picket line, that could cost them their health insurance,” she said.

TUSC has partnered with the Motion Picture and Television Fund and its Entertainment Health Insurance Solutions, which acts as an insurance navigator for people in the industry.

According to TUSC’s website, “MPTF and EHIS will talk directly to members in need, and get them signed up for the health plan that best suits their needs. The TUSC fund will then pay the premiums.”

Fogel says it’s about making sure that everyone in the industry has access to high-quality health care no matter the current industry conditions.

“Every so often when there's one group of people that are going on strike and it's our turn to strike right now, we just wanted to kind of let the other unions know that we consider ourselves to be part of a collective and we hope that they feel that love from us,” Fogel said.

Karen Bass became the first Los Angeles mayor to serve on the influential governing board for the region’s lead homelessness agency when she appointed herself to it three years ago.

Since joining, the mayor has skipped more than half of the meetings held by the L.A. Homeless Services Authority Commission, according to an LAist analysis of public records.

LAist reviewed three years of meeting records and found:

• Bass missed 13 of 21 LAHSA Commission meetings held between mid-August 2025 and now.
• Since Bass named herself to the board in late 2023, she’s been absent for 25 of 47 meetings.
• That's well more than enough to trigger potential removal under the agency's bylaws.

The Mayor’s Office told LAist that, regardless of Bass' attendance record, she has kept up to date on what LAHSA — which is responsible for managing the region’s homelessness response — has been doing.

But the optics could be a problem, especially as Bass fights for reelection in November and as LAHSA, which has been under intense scrutiny, fights for its survival in and out of court.

LAHSA Commissioner Justin Szlasa told LAist that attendance at the commission meetings, which require a majority of commissioners for a quorum, is important, whether it’s the mayor or any other appointee.

“That’s why we have a commission,” he said. “It's not just about achieving a quorum. It’s about people who are focused on considering the issue, tracking the things as they unfold and being part of that deliberative process.”

“If people don’t show up, they can’t do that,” Szlasa said.

Wendy Greuel, the former L.A. city controller and a member of the commission, said Bass’ attendance record hasn’t been a problem.

“There’s never been a mayor that has understood more the issue of homelessness and been as engaged as Mayor Bass,” said Greuel, who was reappointed to the commission by Bass after being named a decade ago by former L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti.

“Her voice, whether in a commission meeting or outside of the commission meeting, has been important and greater than any mayor in my history,” she told LAist.

Why the LAHSA Commission matters

The members of the LAHSA Commission make policy and funding decisions for the agency, including approving its nearly $500 million budget and its contracts with local shelters and nonprofit service providers. LAHSA directs 86% of its funding to those providers, and commissioners are responsible for overseeing how hundreds of millions of public dollars are spent.

Representation on the commission is split evenly between city and county. L.A.’s mayor chooses half the commission’s voting members. Each of the five county supervisors choose one appointee.

Commissioners are unpaid volunteers, most of whom have full-time jobs and other responsibilities.

According to the bylaws, commissioners who are absent four times within a year may be subject to removal. The elected official who appointed them “shall be notified that an appointment needs to be made to fill a vacancy.”

But LAHSA said it did not notify Bass’ office about her own pattern of absences, or any other commissioner. The agency has interpreted the bylaws to give it discretion on whether or not to make those notifications.

“The Commission and its committees have consistently achieved a quorum and fulfilled their responsibilities, so LAHSA has not notified the City or the County regarding commissioner attendance,” said Ahmad Chapman, LAHSA’s communications director, in a statement.

At least six of 10 members must be present to open the public meeting or for the group to vote on anything.

A spokesperson for the Mayor’s Office told LAist that Bass’ four other appointees “alerted her when her attendance was needed,” and kept her informed about its activities.

“It is unprecedented for a mayor to sit on the Board of LAHSA,” Ilanna Morales said in a statement. “She was on the Commission to make key decisions and participate in key discussions that impacted the City.”

A LAHSA Commission meeting on April 25, 2025. Mayor Karen Bass was not in attendance.

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How LAist checked attendance

LAist reviewed three years of meeting records and found that other commissioners had four or more absences over a single 12-month period.

Those records show that one of Bass' appointees, Tanisha Saunders, missed 12 of 21 commission meetings between Aug. 15, 2025, and Aug. 15, 2026. Since Bass appointed Saunders in May 2023, Saunders has been absent from 18 of 53 LAHSA Commission meetings, with an uptick in absences this year, according to an LAist analysis of meeting records.

Saunders is a former foster youth and a former child development advocate who manages a permanent supportive housing site for an affordable housing nonprofit in Venice, according to her biography on LAHSA’s website. She did not immediately respond to LAist’s interview requests, or questions about her attendance record sent by email.

Greuel told LAist that Saunders is an important voice on the board.

“I value the perspective Commissioner Saunders brings to the Commission, including being a person with lived experience and a full-time job who understands firsthand the systems and communities affected by our decisions,” Greuel told LAist.

“If she has a conflict due to her work schedule or other obligations, she routinely confirms proactively whether the meeting has a quorum so her absence will not impact the commission's work," Greuel continued.

Bass reappointed Saunders to the commission in May to serve through 2029. 

Last month, county Supervisor Holly Mitchell replaced her appointee Yasmine-Imani McMorrin on the commission. McMorrin, a Culver City Council member, had missed half of the 22 meetings held over the previous year. It is unclear whether that’s the reason she was replaced.

Neither Mitchell nor McMorrin responded to requests for comment.

Szlasa, an entrepreneur and homelessness policy advocate, said a seat on the commission is more than a part-time job. He has argued the agency should offer an optional financial stipend to the commissioners.

“This is a lot of time, a lot of commitment,” Szlasa told LAist. “It’s something valuable that’s happening and the commissioners should receive a stipend, if they opt for it, for the meetings they attend.”

In addition to the 21 LAHSA Commission meetings over the past year, commissioners are also assigned to working committees focused on specific subject areas. Each of those groups has its own regular meetings.

For example, Saunders serves on the audit committee, which directs internal audit reviews of LAHSA’s spending, policies and performance. Saunders missed just one of 13 audit committee meetings during her time, according to public records.

Bass served on the same audit committee for several months, until January. She did not attend a single meeting, recording five straight absences before being replaced by another commissioner.

Why another elected official left the LAHSA board

While Bass was the first L.A. mayor to appoint herself to the LAHSA Commission, she was not the first or only elected official to do so.

County Supervisor Lindsey Horvath appointed herself to the commission nearly a year earlier. Horvath told LAist she originally appointed herself to the board to try to reform LAHSA, encouraging her colleagues to do the same.

“Broken systems can’t be reformed from the sidelines,” Horvath said.

After serving two years, Horvath said she determined LAHSA could not make necessary changes. She last attended a meeting on Nov. 15, 2024, and said her commission experience "helped drive the County’s decision to fundamentally change the homeless services system."

Within months of Horvath resigning from the commission, the Board of Supervisors voted to divert more than $300 million in annual funding from LAHSA. By then, a string of reviews found LAHSA had failed to properly manage the tax dollars she and other regional leaders have entrusted to it.

Horvath told LAist she worked to stop "millions of County dollars from flowing through LAHSA when it failed to deliver the accountability and results taxpayers deserve.”

LAHSA's future remains deeply uncertain.

In June, the Trump administration suspended LAHSA from federal grant activity, citing financial mismanagement. LAHSA sued to overturn the suspension, and a judge paused it. A trial is now set for April 2027.

A tent in downtown Los Angeles on June 11, 2026. Mayor Bass has said eliminating street homelessness is a top priority.

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How homelessness factors into the race for mayor

Bass is running for reelection in November and one of her key promises is to make progress on homelessness. After celebrating two years of decreases in the annual homeless count, this year's annual count found street homelessness rose 8% in the city of L.A. That increase has weakened Bass’ pitch to voters.

Bass says she’s still working to end street homelessness. She's promising a shift away from pricey motel rooms to cheaper types of shelter and services for unhoused Angelenos, including on city-owned land.

“We actually need to transform the entire system,” Bass said last week at a mayoral debate hosted by the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association. “The city needs to be in control.”

“Right now, one of the fundamental dysfunctional features of the system is it's governed by the city, it's governed by the county, and it's governed by LAHSA,” Bass continued.

As of this year, LAHSA is funded primarily by the city of L.A., which now provides 73% of the regional homelessness agency’s budget. City officials have been slowly considering L.A.’s next steps for managing the city’s approach to homelessness, including whether LAHSA will remain involved.

Bass made absenteeism an issue in mayoral debate

During last week's debate, Bass brought up meeting absenteeism, accusing Councilmember Nithya Raman, her rival on the November ballot, of skipping Los Angeles City Council meetings specifically — and missing “thousands of votes.”

Raman said some of her absences were because she was attending other board meetings she served on as a city representative. Raman noted that Bass had appointed her to serve on some of those boards.

“Other council members have outside appointments, too,” Bass fired back. “You are not the only one. But they find their way to work.”

Bass serves on various governing boards, including chairing the board of directors for the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority. She has faced some criticism for absences on the Metro board.

Metro has a reserved board seat for L.A.’s mayor, making that role a requirement of Bass’ full-time job — unlike the LAHSA Commission.

Bass’ self-appointed three-year term on the Commission expired June 30. LAHSA and a spokesperson for Bass’ office said she is still a member, but did not confirm whether she had formally reappointed herself.

The next LAHSA Commission meeting is scheduled for Friday.

How to attend

When: Friday, Aug. 28 at 9 a.m.

Where: LAHSA, 637 Wilshire Blvd., 1st Floor commission room, Los Angeles

How to watch remote: Live stream link

By the time Democrat Xavier Becerra left Washington, D.C., more Americans than ever had health insurance, owing partly to his work over the years to pass, defend and expand the Affordable Care Act.

It's an achievement the former congressman and U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services often touts as he campaigns for California governor against Republican Steve Hilton, a former Fox News commentator.

But should Becerra cruise to victory in November, as polling suggests, he will face what may be the steepest decline in health insurance coverage in a generation, one that will land especially hard in his home state.

Federal cuts mean more people uninsured

By 2030, the number of uninsured Californians under 65 is expected to nearly double from 2.4 million to 4.6 million as recently enacted state and federal cuts to Medicaid and ACA marketplaces begin to roll back historic gains in health coverage, according to a May analysis by the University of California, Berkeley Labor Center. The anticipated rise in the uninsured population could have broad implications for hospital systems, insurers and the economy.

In February, Miranda Dietz, the labor center's healthcare program director, told legislators the changes could end up costing California about 200,000 jobs, mostly in the healthcare industry.

Hospital executives have begun reporting more unpaid medical bills, and experts warn health plans will raise premiums further as they're left with enrollees who are, on average, sicker and more expensive to cover.

"It's triage," said Jessica Altman, executive director of Covered California, the nation's largest state-run health insurance marketplace. "That's what the next governor is walking into."

California achieved one of the most dramatic drops in its uninsured population in the nation, largely credited to the state's robust adoption of the ACA. If tapped to lead the wealthy, progressive state, Becerra would wrestle with how uninsured Californians get care and who pays as the Trump administration shrinks a federal safety net he once oversaw.

Becerra has some experience pushing back against Washington, D.C. As California attorney general, he successfully defended many provisions of the Affordable Care Act, including access to birth control.

Becerra said he would issue an executive order to keep those affected by federal cuts insured. But he has not detailed how the state would backfill as much as $30 billion in federal funding California stands to lose annually.

At a policy forum hosted by Politico this month, Becerra promised Californians would not lose health coverage despite federal cutbacks, saying he would push the industry to eliminate waste from "attorneys, accountants, pencil pushers" that cost consumers billions.

"I'm going to ask them to help me extract some of that waste and put it into healthcare, which helps us cover the cost of keeping Californians insured," he said.

His opponent, Hilton, is trying to appeal to voters opposed to President Donald Trump, despite receiving the president's endorsement, and has stumped on cutting off coverage for Californians without legal status, which is paid for with state funds. Hilton has vowed to use those savings to issue state income tax breaks, calling it an immediate antidote to high costs.

Steve Hilton, the Republican candidate for governor of California, campaigns at a Sheraton hotel on July 27 in Pomona.

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"We all understand that the healthcare system is a mess and needs major reform," Hilton said in an interview. "The quickest thing we can do on healthcare costs is actually to tax people less."

Left behind?

In 2010, Becerra was part of U.S. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi's leadership team and helped whip up votes to pass the law. He also had a hand in crafting it, though his attempt to include a government-backed coverage option failed.

A decade later, when lawmakers considered him for the nation's top healthcare job, Becerra said his primary mission would be to carry out President Biden's vision to expand access and cut costs under the Affordable Care Act.

Before the ACA, some 50 million Americans — roughly 1 in 6 — were uninsured. Within a few years of the law's passage in 2010, its expansion of Medicaid eligibility and financial aid to lower-income marketplace enrollees helped slash the U.S. uninsured rate by nearly half.

Millions more gained coverage during the COVID-19 pandemic after Becerra implemented a freeze on Medicaid disenrollment and administered generous but temporary tax credits that put the cost of Obamacare plans within reach for more people.

As Biden's health secretary, Becerra launched aggressive public awareness campaigns, loosened enrollment rules and distributed hundreds of millions in grants to pay consumer assistants, also known as healthcare navigators, to help enrollees wade through paperwork.

"One of the common things we would hear from him as a leader was, 'Who's being left behind?'" said Benjamin Sommers, a Harvard health policy professor who was a deputy assistant secretary under Becerra.

Under Biden and Becerra, the percentage of people with health insurance reached a historic high of 92%, or 310 million Americans having health coverage in 2024.

Republican response

But conservatives said those policies inflated enrollment by attracting fraudulent and wasteful coverage. In response, the second Trump administration has tightened enrollment windows and toughened income reporting.

"It's simple and easy to say, well, the numbers are up so the program must be working," said Edmund Haislmaier, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation, a conservative think tank. "My argument would be that's the wrong metric."

Last summer, the GOP-led Congress passed Trump's One Big Beautiful Bill Act, which Republicans argued preserves Medicaid for those who need it most while rooting out fraud and waste. Altogether, the law is expected to cut Medicaid spending by $900 billion-plus over a decade.

Congress also allowed enhanced premium tax credits for Obamacare plans to expire last year, spiking premium payments for middle-income Americans and driving down enrollment by nearly 3 million this year.

"We are now witnessing almost a wholesale reversal of pretty much all those policies" that helped cover millions more Americans, said Sabrina Corlette, co-director of the Center on Health Insurance Reforms at Georgetown University.

For Eric Maciel, the $800 cost of a Covered California plan is too much. To avoid injury, the 28-year-old stays home more and rarely plays pickup soccer at the park — the other players, he added, can get pretty rough.

"That's another car note," Maciel said. "I'd be left with nothing."

Health economists say Maciel is the type of customer insurers need to stabilize their risk pools: young, healthy and less costly.

Hilton criticized state leaders for passing a revised provider tax he asserts will send premiums soaring and said he wants to inject more competition into California's health insurance market — but he offered no specific ideas.

Playing defense

Higher-than-expected state costs coupled with federal cuts have prompted California to retreat on healthcare coverage. Federal funds account for one-third of the state's budget and more than 60% of spending by Medi-Cal, the state's Medicaid program.

Xavier Becerra served in the House of Representatives when the Affordable Care Act passed and as health secretary under President Biden. He's the frontrunner in California's governor's race.

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Gov. Gavin Newsom has frozen enrollment for immigrants without legal status, enacted monthly premiums for some, and plans to only temporarily backfill federal assistance for legal immigrants and refugees.

Newsom and Democratic lawmakers agreed to delay some cuts until July 2027, leaving the next governor to weigh further rollbacks against increased taxes. Becerra, a California native born to Mexican immigrants, opposes what's known as the billionaire tax, on November's ballot. This month, he said he supported legislative efforts to penalize large corporations whose workers rely on Medi-Cal, arguing that taxpayers are subsidizing employers' low wages and paltry benefits.

County governments, which are legally required to provide healthcare to uninsured residents too poor to afford care, are lobbying lawmakers for funding to treat what they describe as a fresh deluge of patients who need free care.

"It's a pretty big cliff if all this stuff goes into effect," said Dietz, the labor center's healthcare program director. And there's a choice whether to make it less bad and maintain coverage for folks."

KFF Health News is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues and is one of the core operating programs at KFF — the independent source for health policy research, polling, and journalism.

Writer Aida Salazar did not spend endless hours on devices as a teen. She grew up in the 1980s, way before TikTok and Instagram. But she has raised teens, a boy and a girl. She felt she lost them to their screens during the pandemic.

“To the point where they were harming themselves on different levels,” she said.

The antidote to the overconsumption of screens, she and her husband realized, was found when they spent time outdoors near their home in Oakland.

“We went to the redwoods, or we went to the ocean, or we went somewhere else where they were my kids again,” she said.

Salazar, who has received numerous awards for some of her 10 YA books, has drawn on that experience for her latest work, Stream.

It’s written in first person rhyme in the voices of the two main characters, a teen boy named Elio and Celi, a girl. (Both appear in Salazar's previous YA novels).

In this book they’re both eighth graders who live separately in Oakland. After their parents realize the extent of their tech dependency, they take the drastic action to send them to rural Mexico for an IRL shock.

“To detox digitally in a rancho, or a place that has no running water, no electricity, and of course, no internet,” said Salazar.

Out of their digital element

Salazar was born in the Mexican state of Zacatecas and grew up in Maywood, in Southeast L.A. County, before earning a master’s degree in writing from CalArts.

The rural Mexican setting of Stream is partly based on her mother’s hometown in Zacatecas, where she wrote some of the book. The title is inspired by a vibrant stream there that once sustained the community but is now in the shadow of crumbling adobe homes.

The cover for the YA book Stream, writren by Aida Salazar.

The book begins with Elio’s narration that brims with excitement about his last day of school.

The first page of the YA novel, Stream.

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Celi’s narration of that last day is more dream-like.

A page from the YA novel, Stream.

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In Mexico, out of their digital element, some connection blooms which, Salazar said, may be love.

Adults can read the book, she said, but it’s meant for teens to read in order to see how Elio and Celi struggle to balance digital and in-person relationships as well as connection and disconnection to nature and their families.

“I don't want our young people especially, to lose their understanding of their source, of who we are as natural beings connected to land, to ancestors, to legacy,” she said.

She believes nurturing the stream of connections to those things will go a long way towards helping teens rise above the various social and environmental challenges they will face in their adult lives.

A battle over a first-of-its-kind tax on billionaires is heating up in California, with tech moguls pumping millions of dollars into a campaign to defeat it and union leaders who support the measure insisting the state's very wealthiest residents should pay their fair share.

Voters in November will be asked whether to pass the ballot measure, known as Proposition 40, which imposes a one-time 5% tax on the assets of the nearly 250 billionaires in the state. Backers say the new revenue would mostly fund healthcare services.

The tax was envisioned by union leader Dave Regan, who said millions of the state's neediest patients could lose health insurance in the coming years, driven largely by President Trump's 2025 tax and spending bill. Dubbed by the White House the "One Big Beautiful Bill," the law slashes federal funding to California and other states.

"Proposition 40 was developed specifically to backfill those cuts from the One Big Bill that are scheduled to take effect in the next five years. It is a five-year solution to that plan," said Regan, who is the president of the SEIU United Healthcare Workers West.

If passed, the measure would direct 90% of the tax revenue to fund healthcare services and the other 10% to food assistance and public education across California.

"We're not even talking about the top 1%, we're talking about the top 0.0001%, the billionaires: 250 individuals in California, $2.4 trillion worth of wealth, and that's an amount of money equivalent to the annual income of all Californians who are not billionaires, including extraordinarily wealthy people," Regan said.

But the populist fervor fueling supporters of the measure is being met with a growing coalition of resisters, from tech billionaires to other unions and some state Democrats. That includes Democratic Gov. Gavin Newsom, who has said the tax would hurt the state's economy, which is powered by profitable tech companies in Silicon Valley that have spawned many of the billionaires who would be taxed under the measure.

Opponents of the tax argue it offers a short-term fix to a long-term problem and could ultimately backfire.

"I'm not against taxes. But this is not the right tool. What we need to develop is something that is stable and consistent," said René Bravo, president of the California Medical Association, in an interview with NPR. "Human beings need and deserve health care that is financed in such a way that you're not increasing the insecurity."

Bravo argues Proposition 40, if passed, would make patients more unstable by providing them with bridge coverage now, but no longer-term solution — making it difficult to plan out medical coverage over many years. Bravo also said he does not trust state lawmakers to spend most of the new revenue on healthcare, speculating that they could direct the money to other pet projects.

"Not accurate, not true," responded union leader Regan. He said voters face a choice between more immediate healthcare funding for Californians or none at all, and that a third way being proposed by some critics is not on the ballot.

Will billionaires leave California if wealth tax passes?

Another major rift between both sides of the fight is whether the first-of-its-kind state wealth tax would drive billionaires out of California.

It's a crucial issue, since California's Chamber of Commerce estimates 1% of the state's residents pay nearly 50% of all personal income taxes.

Few disagree that a mass flight of the ultra-rich would throw California's budget into a tailspin, but the measure has sparked a fierce debate about whether billionaires will actually pack up and leave the state.

French economist Thomas Piketty, who has written extensively about disparities in international wealth, has argued that what's known as "capital flight" is often overstated in debates about wealth taxes. "If one builds a fortune while relying on the country's infrastructure, education, and health systems, there is no reason that one should so readily escape the collective obligations that fund these systems," Piketty wrote last year about a proposed wealth tax in France aimed at the ultra-rich.

Adam Michel, who studies tax policy at the libertarian Cato Institute, believes taxing high income earners will be destructive for the state.

"A wealth tax of this magnitude will be bad for California and for California taxpayers. We should expect not just targeted billionaires to leave, but anyone that expects to be a billionaire or expects to be the target of aggressive taxes like this in the future to leave," he said.

Google co-founder Sergey Brin, one of the richest people in the world, agrees.

He has poured $102 million into a group known as Building a Better California, which he co-founded with former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt. The group has also received millions of dollars in funding from venture capitalist John Doerr, crypto executive Chris Larsen and others. Building a Better California's mission is to defeat the effort, in part by supporting a separate ballot measure that would invalidate the wealth tax. Other tech billionaires, including Palantir founder Peter Thiel, who no longer lives in California, have funneled millions of dollars into other groups hoping to topple the measure.

A spokesperson for Building a Better California did not return a request for comment, but Brin told The New York Times: "I fled socialism with my family in 1979 and know the devastating, oppressive society it created in the Soviet Union. I don't want California to end up in the same place."

Brin recently moved to the Nevada side of Lake Tahoe. Critics of the tax say there will only be more billionaires leaving California if voters pass the measure.

Union leader Regan calls Brin's move political theater. He pointed out that the wealth tax applies to California residents who lived in the state in January of this year, so moving out of state would not allow anyone to dodge the tax, nor would relocating after November, if the ballot measure prevails. Bloomberg estimated the tax could personally cost Brin around $13 billion.

Regan said Brin owes his success in part to government-backed research that helped create Google and insisted that a one-time 5% tax would not be overly burdensome for the tech mogul.

"You are now one of the five wealthiest people in the world in the state that made you rich, enormously rich," said Regan as if speaking directly to Brin, noting that California "needs to stabilize its healthcare system."

Some polls show that Californians are nearly evenly split on the tax.
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